VGS's Radio Dial and New Philosophy.

The last year has been quite the experience. I have finally given up on the thought that the Internet is anywhere near the "democratic" place it is made out to be. It is unlikely that I will be posting as much in the future.

Still, the VGS blog family briefly had quite a success before its various silent partners reduced or completely withdrew their support. There was every reason to understand that a million hits per year was within reach in the near term. But the Net is entirely private property and the various free or advertising-based services are bound to have unspoken limitations corresponding to the proprietors' various agendas. Most bloggers will never bump up against the walls of their cage and all will go along believing the sky's the limit. All is as it is designed to be.

There are some things that can be accomplished at a few hundred hits per day (search-engines permitting), however, and I intend to forge ahead in a smaller way. The old Virtual Grub Street Computer Archive pages, the originals of which have been lost with the demise of the MyBlogSite blogging system, you may have noticed, have been spread amoung the various remaining members of the VGS blog family. The new numbers of Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry" column are now being posting at VGS's Palm Beaches Review journal/blog.

I will be building a number of new theme-pages (computer oriented and otherwise). The first is the Virtual Grub Street Radio Dial already in-progress in VGS's Indexes and Specialty Pages blog. I am an avid short-wave listener when I can find the time and have hunted down scores of of net-casts by short-wave stations large and small over the years. The Radio Dial will also include standard-band stations. Seven stations are presently listed and many programs and individual broadcasts. Both the number of stations and amount of related information will be greatly expanded in the coming weeks.